By KimTong-hyung
Staff Reporter

At the peak of their careers, now disgraced cloning experts Hwang Woo-suk and Lee Byeong-cheon shared the limelight.

In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Hwang was reduced to the status of a pariah after his studies on cloned human embryos and stem cells were found to be fraudulent, while Lee burrowed into his Seoul National University (SNU) lab.

In an odd twist of fate, the mentor and protege now find themselves at odds over cloning rights.

Lee is associated with Korean biotech firm RNL Bio, which announced the successful embryo implantation of the world's first commercially cloned dog earlier this year.

Hwang, fired from SNU and now having his own lab in Gyeonggi Province, works for California-based BioArts International, which made headlines for its planned July 5-9 auction rewarding five winners a chance to clone their favorite pets.

BioArts claims RNL Bio has no legal rights to clone dogs as it has an exclusive license for the cloning of animals using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology. The license was granted to Start Licensing and applies to cloning patents developed at the Roslin Institute for the cloning of ``Dolly'' the sheep.

RNL Bio responds that it owns the worldwide license for dog cloning, granted to SNU which held the patents for the cloning of ``Snuppy'' the dog ― a verified Hwang achievement. The Korean company stresses that the technology associated with sheep cloning has never been successful in producing a genetic copy of a dog.

There is the possibility of a legal battle brewing between the world's only two companies involved in commercial dog cloning, which may eventually come down to an ultimate showdown between SNU and Start Licensing.

``The two licenses are different and concern two different types of cloning,'' said Ra Jeong-chan, the head of RNL Bio.

``SNU owns the rights for the Snuppy patents, and Hwang, as one of the authors of the study, only owns the rights to share the profits from the commercial use of the technology. There is nothing wrong with our license.''

Kim Sun-woong, a patent lawyer representing Sooam Biotech Research Center, Hwang's current lab, has a different take. He claims that BioArts' exclusive rights covers all cloning of animals using somatic-cell derived methods, which he calls ``core technology,'' and the SNU patents are just about ``methodology.''

``A patent was awarded for the cloning technology used to produce Dolly in 2000,'' said Kim.

``However, the patent doesn't cover academic efforts and scientists have been free to push forward the cloning technology for animals. However, it becomes a problem when companies start making money from the technology,'' he said.

The battle seems much more than a legal matter for Hwang and Lee, who now seem to be interlocked in a rivalry over the title of the world's No. 1 authority in dog cloning.

Hyun Sang-hwan, a Chungbuk National University scientist and a colleague of Hwang at Sooam, says that Hwang's current team is a lot more sophisticated in skills than the group he led when Snuppy was cloned in 2005.

``During the Snuppy experiment, the cloning success rate was just about 0.18 percent,'' said Hyun.

``I won't tell you the exact numbers percentage wise, but when we cloned the Tibetan mastiffs for the Chinese Academy of Sciences earlier this year, we got 17 clones from six surrogate mothers,'' he said.

Hwang's team have implanted three clones of a dog named ``Missy,'' a former pet owned by the mother of Lou Hawthorne, the head of BioArts, and 17 clones of Tibetan mastiffs as requested by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Hyun said that the advanced technology of Hwang's team has the disgraced scientists applying for new patents in ova extraction technology, nuclear transfer and cell fusion techniques. Aside from commercial activities, Hwang's team is also continuing research for using dog-cloning technology for the medical treatment of humans, Hyun said, although refusing to elaborate.

``We could be announcing a breakthrough study soon,'' Hyun said.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr